HTC 7 Trophy - Interface, Performance and Verdict

Summary

Our Score

8/10

User Score

Review Price free/subscription

Along with some slick Xbox gaming integration, Zune music streaming, Office document viewing and editing and rapidly growing app store this makes for a fairly capable modern OS. However, there are a couple of major caveats.

We've already mentioned the lack of copy and paste, which will be added in an update in a month or two's time, but there's also no multitasking. Also, we're not too keen on the overall interface in the sense that while it's slick, it does feel a little bit like it's been designed with an eye to style over substance.

Also the way the Back button works is very strange. Instead of working as a back function within whatever app you have open – navigating back a page in the web browser, or back from looking at an album to viewing the list of artists, for instance – it always takes you back to whatever the previous screen you were looking at was, even if it was the homescreen or another app. The result is that if you're browsing the web, say, then nip out to check an email, when you return to the web browser and press the Back button it will take you back to the email rather than back a page in the browser.

Overall, though, if you're looking to upgrade from a non-smartphone then you'll find Windows Phone 7 a great OS. It's just that iOS, Android, or WebOS users will probably find it a bit limiting and too unfamiliar.

To try and differentiate its handsets from other Windows Phone 7 alternatives, HTC has made available a number of little apps including the HTC Hub, which gives you quick access to a number of features like weather and and HTC app downloader. Frankly, it's far too little to be of any significance in your buying decision. The same could be said of the Dolby Mobile sound enhancements exclusively on offer on HTC handsets that let you add surround effects when watching a movie and listening with headphones.

Getting back to the hardware, inside the HTC 7 Trophy you'll find a 1GHz processor, 576MB RAM and a fairly miserly 8GB of storage, and no microSD slot for expanding that storage.

What will quickly fill that storage is the camera with its 720p HD video mode, which given how nice to use the camera is, you'll probably be using quite frequently. The quality for both stills and video isn't stellar but it's certainly on a par with most of its peers and is sufficient for general social use.

With its 1500mAh battery, you get a fairly typical lifespan from this phone. A couple of days and you'll generally be needing to recharge, though as ever you can extend this by a day or so with much lighter use while heavy use will reduce this to as little as a day.

Verdict

Thanks to a neat design and relatively low cost, this is definitely one of the choice Windows Phone 7 handsets out there. However, we're still not entirely convinced that Windows Phone 7 is in fact the best choice of mobile OS, so it's not a phone we'd out and out recommend. We recommend reading our in-depth look at Windows Phone 7 so you can see for yourself whether it's for you.